El contrato

EL CONTRATO (THE CONTRACT) is a two-year project developed by Bulegoa z/b in collaboration with AlhóndigaBilbao. The project has two phases: a reading group developed during 2013 and an exhibition in autumn 2014. The exhibition is articulated around the themes examined in the reading group, and comprises works by around 30 artists, as well as a film programme, talks, performances, and a new reading group. EL CONTRATO aims to enquire into the ways in which generally accepted, tacit agreements condition practices and ways of making, doing, being and acting.

The basic aim of EL CONTRATO is to enquire into the ways in which generally accepted agreements from modernity to today have conditioned the evolution of certain practices within the humanities such as art, history or social theory. The question is whether it is possible to negotiate such established accords without falling into the indifference so often associated with consensus; and if the need for the social pact can be critically considered without forcing an agreement between different agents.

The starting point of the EL CONTRATO reading sessions was the revision of the four areas that reflect the practices that anchor Bulegoa z/b’s general project as an office of art and knowledge: sociology, curatorship, criticism and choreography. The reading group shared different documents: essays, historical texts, legal acts, conferences, poems, prose, film reviews, news, interviews, films, audio recordings. Members read aloud, debated and did exercises in collective writing.

The exhibition EL CONTRATO is comprised of 12 parts—reflecting the number of reading sessions—resulting from group discussions: the staging of the social contract, the contract between bodies, the contract in forms of production, the contract as dispositif, dismantling the contract, contracts between theory and practice, declassifying the contract, written and spoken contracts, pedagogical contracts, the performativity of the contract, the archive as contract, and the contract with thought.

The exhibition sets up a dialogue between different art media—painting, film, sculpture, photography, poetry, sound, theatre and dance—and accepted protocols in exhibition and performing arts spaces, questioning them or possibly reaffirming them.